


The way home is not the way back

by derevko_child



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, other characters to be tagged as they appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-03-03 13:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13342149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derevko_child/pseuds/derevko_child
Summary: Her main mission was to protect Phil and she failed that, losing his trust and his friendship in the process. Her secondary mission was to protect everyone else and with Trip, she’s confident that the team is in good hands. She’ll be of little use as scientific support and absolutely useless as emotional support.She closes her eyes as she takes a deep breath, letting it out after a count to five. Her skin prickles, not from the cool air of the overworked air conditioner, but from the decision she’s about to make.Or: Melinda doesn't come back at the end ofNothing Personal





	1. Chapter 1

_"Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back."  
\--Colin Wilson_

I.

 

She was supposed to come back.

She’s behind the wheel of a car from a somewhat disreputable rental dealership – a half-a-decade-old gas guzzler with an engine that roars every time she pushes on the accelerator too hard – when a freak accident forces her to take the nearest exit and straight onto a jam-packed street filled with vehicles avoiding the highway.

The motel where the team is currently holed out in is supposed to be just thirty minutes away; the slow-moving traffic is turning the seconds into minutes and the minutes are about to turn into an hour. She has nothing but the impatient hum of the engine as company.

It’s almost like being back in the Bus.

Almost.

There’s a certain kind of tranquility that came with flying the Bus, a calmness that allowed her to differentiate between solitude and loneliness. Solitude was being with the clouds while listening to the team argue about the admissibility of Zygon in a science-fiction themed scrabble; loneliness is having to switch off the audio because even though a part of her wants to join them – the part that wants to tell Simmons to save Zygon for a triple-word, triple-letter combo –a larger part that tells her that she’s going to tarnish the moment; that’s she’s going to sully them, the same way that she had tainted everything during the past few years.

There’s no solitude in this traffic jam, inside this car. Only loneliness.

She keeps her grip on the steering wheel as the vehicles crawl forward at a turtle’s pace.

A small voice in her head urges her to turn back. Yes, Phil needed answers and she searched it for him, but giving them to him personally was unnecessary. He didn’t need her, he said as much. It might have been said out of anger although it’s something that she’s long known to be true but never had the courage to say out loud: he didn’t need her, but she needed him. 

She just didn’t know how much until he died.

The vehicles around her started honking their horns and her fingers itch to turn on the radio to drown out the noise. She counts to ten and decides against it. Radio stations these days either talk too much and play little music, or plays only the worst music. 

Orange and yellow light brightly glares inside the car as the sun begins to set. She lowers the sun visor and re-computes the travel to the motel.

She’s expecting rejection—not just from Phil but from the whole team as well. She didn’t just build the team around him, she also made sure that they possess the qualities he looks for in agents he wants to mentor. Eagerness to learn. Integrity. Loyalty. What she did, good intentions notwithstanding, will not easily be forgiven by any of them.

Especially after Ward…

She tightens her grip on the steering wheel. She chose the team, including Ward— she had initial misgivings about his psych eval but she overlooked it because he had the potential to become a good mentor. She chose to ignore her instincts, and a rat ended up in the team.

Would they want her back if they knew that?

The flash drive containing the answers to T.A.H.I.T.I. burns a hole in her pocket. She doesn’t have to be the one to give it to him, the small voice in her head says. He doesn’t need her, they don’t need her, and if she insists on going and be turned away afterwards… she doesn’t think she’ll be able to handle the rejection as well as her old self could. 

And maybe that was the root of the problem— she’s not that person anymore.

The old Melinda May would look at children and would have seen a bright future with Andrew; she’d look at her hands and would have seen nails getting too long for a proper punch, or maybe seen a cut on her knuckle that she only just noticed. The old Melinda doesn’t know the weight of a little girl’s body in her arms, or the acute awareness of the body’s warmth fading away; she doesn’t see blood every time she looks at her hands and doesn’t have nightmares about a deranged puppet master who looks like an innocent little girl trying to reach for her. The old Melinda May would have accepted Fury’s assignment because she’s Coulson’s friend, not because there was desperation and guilt clawing out of her chest.

_(She needs to protect him, needs him alive, needs him to be by her side)_

Old Melinda would have matched his banter with a bit of teasing, would pretend to curb those ridiculously corny jokes to prevent an awkward laughing epidemic and would never add to the emotional baggage of an actual death experience.

That was who the newly-resurrected Phil Coulson needed, and she couldn’t even be that person for him.

An obnoxious honk jolts her out of her thoughts and she blinks, realizing that the cars started moving again.

Her main mission was to protect Phil and she failed that, losing his trust and his friendship in the process. Her secondary mission was to protect everyone else and with Trip, she’s confident that the team is in good hands. She’ll be of little use as scientific support and absolutely useless as emotional support.

She closes her eyes as she takes a deep breath, letting it out after a count to five. Her skin prickles, not from the cool air of the overworked air conditioner, but from the decision she’s about to make.

The team will be fine without her. 

Phil… she could protect Phil from a distance.

With a clenched jaw, she takes a left and goes back to the highway, away from the direction of the motel.

* * *

Her first stop is an apartment in a relatively quiet neighborhood in Manhattan.

“I thought you’re going back to Coulson.”

When she decided to go back, there was no doubt on who she’ll entrust the flash drive with. Maria Hill was discreet and had a high enough clearance at SHIELD that she wouldn’t be bothered if the former Deputy Director would satisfy her curiosity regarding Project T.A.H.I.T.I.

“I was.”

“What happened?”

“I changed my mind.”

Something flickers across Maria’s face, an expression that’s a mix of concern and curiosity, but the younger woman doesn’t say anything. She hands Melinda a bottle of beer and sinks on the couch opposite hers.

“I want you to give this to him.” Melinda puts the flash drive on top of the table and slides it towards Maria.

“Is this what I think it is?” Maria asks as she takes the flash drive.

“It was buried in Phil’s grave.”

“Ah, so it _was_ literal.” Maria inspects the flash drive, rolling it in between her fingers before shaking her head, “I don’t think I’m the appropriate person for that job.” She says before sliding drive on the table and back to her.

“Who should give it to him, then? Fury?”

“Fury’s dead.”

Melinda resists the urge to roll her eyes and gives Maria a pointed look. Maria responds to it with a stoic one of her own before taking a sip from her beer.

They sit in silence. For a moment, it feels like the past few days never happened, that their world didn’t crash and burn and left them with shattered pieces to put back together.

“You should be the one to give it to him.” Maria says, finally.

“I can’t.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like you.”

A pause.

“I haven’t been like me for a long time.”

Maria’s sharp intake of breath is echoes around the room, as though the statement hurts her more than it hurts Melinda. 

“Sorry.” Maria mutters as she takes another swig of her beer.

“Don’t be.” She softly replies. She lets the quiet continue for a moment before saying, “Ward… Ward said he understood what I did—what I had to do.” 

It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, knowing that she let a small part of herself be vulnerable to that Hydra scumbag traitor. Melinda tries to wash it away with beer.

“You can’t possibly equate what you did to what that traitorous shitbag did.” 

She knows it isn’t the same but… she picked Ward for Coulson’s team. Done the horizontal tango with him. Expected him to do his goddamn job. The rage she feels every time she remembers his betrayal makes her blood boil.

And she only knew him for several months. 

She can’t begin to imagine what Phil felt when he discovered that his best friend of twenty-five years has been going behind his back and reporting his every move.

“Betrayal feels the same.”

Maria sighs, a long and resigned one she usually reserves for incidents that can’t be undone by a simple hand wave using SHIELD’s resources, before lying down on the couch and cradling her bottle like it’s an important piece of paperwork.

The muffled sounds of the busy street punctuate the hush that envelopes them.

“I cleared him for your team.” Maria says out of the blue, not feeling the need to name names.

“I picked him.”

“ _Technically_ , you created a mission parameter and that poop-cupine got in it.” Melinda has no idea what poop-cupine means or what it looks like but it sounds like an apt description for Ward.

“Fury showed me the list of candidates for the team and asked me who Coulson would choose…” she trails off and Melinda suddenly feels a twinge on her right arm.

“…and Coulson picked everybody you chose.” Maria says, almost in a sigh.

She finishes her beer and puts the bottle on the coaster on top of the table. She leans back and gingerly touches her arm. The wound’s healing well; the bullet only grazed her arm, nothing serious. What bothers her is the dull pain that comes a little too often for a mere flesh wound.

“So. What do you plan to do now?” the younger woman asks as she stares at the ceiling.

She shrugs. 

“Stark’s hiring.” Maria says, with what sounds like a hopeful note in her voice.

“Stark? No, thanks.” She might have limited options right now, but she has absolutely no interest to work in the private sector—even if Stark is building his own version of SHIELD.

“It pays well.”

“Not interested.”

Maria sits up properly and places her beer on the table, “Not your style, huh?” a wry smile appears on her face before she rises from the couch, “I’m going to get you another beer and you can tell me how you managed to evade the eight units doing surveillance on my apartment.”

“There were nine.”

“Damn it, there were only eight yesterday.” Maria mutters as she walks across the living room and into the kitchen.

Melinda reaches for the flash drive and puts it in the secret pocket of her jeans before leaning back on the chair and allows herself to relax, even for just a little bit. 

She’ll find a way to get this to him without having to give it to him herself.

* * *

Her next stop is Pennsylvania.

Her mother tuts in disapproval at the sight of her on the doorstep with an overnight bag by her feet. She grumbles about the timing of her arrival – just a little after midnight – saying that she should have at least sent her a message a few hours prior, so that she could have stocked the pantry and prepared her room.

“It’s just for a few days, mom.” Melinda says as she follows her mother to the kitchen.

“You want to eat paper and sleep on the floor during that time, then?”

Melinda bites back a sigh, “No.”

Her mother motions for her to sit behind the kitchen counter while she takes a kettle to fill it with water.

“I can make the tea,” Melinda offers.

“Good.” Her mother sets the kettle on top of the stove before turning it on, “I still have to find the good linens for your room.”

“Mom, you don’t have to—”

“Melinda.” Her mother’s tone immediately stops the protests coming out of her lips, “Asking for my help regarding intel is one thing. But you coming home without my prompting or any holiday obligating you? _That_ is something else entirely.”

And the last time she came home in such a similar circumstance, she sent the divorce papers to Andrew from the house.

Melinda lets her shoulders drop, “It’s not as bad as before. I just needed to go somewhere safe.”

“That is even worse.”

She twists her hands in her lap and avoids her mother’s steely gaze—the one that could make even the toughest spies spill their secrets; the steely gaze that even the silver-tongued Philip Coulson couldn’t talk his way out of.

There’s neither an exasperated sigh nor an ‘I told you so’ from her mother. There’s only the ticking of the battered clock on the wall and the sound of the water coming to a boil.

“Make the tea. I will prepare your room.” Her mother declares with finality and walks out of the kitchen.

Melinda sighs as the stiffness in her muscles loosens and she slides into the familiar creaks of the walls and the solidness of the wooden floors under her. She listens to the bubbling of the water, to the ticking of the clock – which she’s sure up to this day has some sort of surveillance device – and to the quiet shuffling of her mother’s feet above her head.

 _Home_. She’s home.

(Her mother once told her that, as cliché as it may sound, home is not a place; it’s people. And she knows her mother worries when she comes to Pennsylvania alone because for her mother, it means she’s the only one left that Melinda can call home)

Melinda stands up from her seat to turn off the stove when the kettle’s shrill screams fill the kitchen. Her nerves, which have been on the edge ever since SHIELD fell, eases while she looks for her mother’s favorite mug in the cupboard.

She picks the tea her mother loves— tea that looks light and tastes clean but packs a punch after the first sip. The first time Phil had it, he made a remark about the tea being a little like her mother, an observation she agreed with.

(Lian May is small – even smaller than her in her youth – unassuming, and spoke with a soft British accent that fascinated Melinda when she was a child. She drove her to skating practice – and then wushu, and karate and aikido – when she could, attended school recitals when she could, and attended that rare disciplinary parent-teacher meetings, when she could. Who would think that the same woman can incapacitate a man thrice her size with five precise blows, or infiltrate criminal organizations and destroying them from the inside without getting her cover blown?)

She finds a tray and carefully puts the steaming mugs on it before going out of the kitchen and heading upstairs. 

Her mother may be fixing her room but she doesn’t _expect_ to do it by herself.

* * *

‘A few days’ turn out to be one-and-a-half days, although it wasn’t entirely because of Melinda’s fault.

She takes a trip to the store after breakfast to get groceries for her mother, as she had requested. When she gets home, she finds Nick Fury – alive and well – sitting in the kitchen, eating a bowl of wonton noodles. There’s a pitcher of winter melon punch in the middle of the table.

“Fury.” She curtly greets, placing the bags on the counter and completely unsurprised that the man isn’t dead. _At all_. She glances out the window and sees her mother tending the garden, trying her damndest not to look at their direction.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Tell Hill to fake some tears when she tells people you’re dead.” She dryly answers.

Fury puts down his chopsticks and turned to face her, “Told her that. Got vetoed. Too dramatic, she said.”

Melinda doesn’t say anything else and turns around, focusing on transferring the food from the bags and into the pantry. She doesn’t care why he’s here and although a little curious, does not want to know how he managed to wheedle out a bowl of wonton noodles and a pitcher of winter melon punch from her mother.

“I’m heading to Europe. I need someone to fly my plane.” Fury’s voice rings out clearly and it makes her pause for a second.

She slowly takes a deep breath and sighs.

“I want the best pilot in that plane and that’s you.”

She turns around, “You’re resorting to flattery now?” she asks with a raised brow.

“It’s not flattery if it’s true. I’m stating facts.” He drawls, “Hydra needs to be stopped. Which means I need the best for this.”

“Call the Avengers.”

“I said the best, not firepower.”

“Try Coulson.”

“He’s better at talking than at flying. But Coulson chose you to pilot the Bus and I trust his judgment, so I’m getting you.” He reaches for his glass and takes a drink, “Coulson’s tracking down Garret.” He offers.

Melinda instinctively knows that Fury hasn’t revealed himself to Coulson—not yet, anyway. The man’s planning a grand entrance armed with a large gun and with a clever quip or two. It’s a predilection Coulson shares with him; Melinda supposes it’s a mentor-protégé thing.

She returns her attention to the pantry, putting the can of peaches beside the can of peas. Fury’s good eye follows her every move, something which she ignores until she’s finished putting all the boxed and canned goods in the cupboard.

She glances at him and finds that she was correct about Fury staring at her back, although she didn’t think he’d still be holding on to the glass of juice. Or refilling it, for that matter.

“Are you really just asking me to fly your plane?” She says, echoing what she said to Coulson when he went to her cubicle in the Hub and told her she’s going to be part of the team. Fury told her to say yes—no matter what position Coulson offers to her, she was to say yes.

But nobody told her she can’t negotiate. Or put some boundaries, some limitations.

Fury looks at his glass like it’s full of damn fine whiskey and not winter melon juice, “Not interested in revenge, May?”

She doesn’t reply and instead keeps her gaze leveled at him. Agreeing to anything else might mean seeing Coulson and the team and she’s not ready to face them. Not yet. Revenge can wait.

Fury eyed her with his good eye, “If this is about—”

“I’ll fly your plane. That’s it.” She says, cutting him off.

Fury shakes his head and exhales loudly, “We leave in ten.” He says before adding, “I told your mother you’ll tell her you’re leaving this time.”

Melinda rolls her eyes, “That, again?” It’s been ten years since that incident happened and Coulson had already apologized for it— he apologizes for it every time he finds himself visiting her mother.

Fury shrugs and finishes his juice before gathering the empty bowl and the glass and rising from the chair, “Bring a change of clothes. We’ll be taking a few… _detours_.” He says, walking towards her and loading the dishes in the dishwasher, “Ten minutes.”

She waits until she hears the front door close before going out to the garden. Her mother seems to have finished her task and she’s resting under a shade, her gardening gloves tucked in her pocket.

“Fury needs a pilot.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Melinda flashes a quizzical look at her mother, who made a dismissive wave with her hand.

“He told me before you returned from the store.” She clarifies. “As I’ve said before, there is no surveillance device on that clock, Melinda.”

She chooses to ignore it because she still doesn’t believe it, no matter what her mother says. “I’ll be back home when I’m not needed anymore.”

“And if they need you longer than you expected?”

 _They won’t_ , she thinks, “I’ll call.”

“Bring food, then. And some of the winter melon. Nicholas seems to be taking his panhandler wardrobe too seriously.”

* * *

Fury’s detours were anything but _few._

The first detour is Mexico City, to pick up supplies and three level six specialists who fought their way out of a SHIELD satellite office. 

The second, Panama.

The third, Bogota, to rendezvous with an asset who informed them that the _Iliad_ successfully repelled Hydra’s attack.

Then to Lima.

Then to Santiago where a SHIELD lab had fallen but not its research, thanks to the quick-thinking agents they picked up.

Buenos Aires, to drop off the asset together with the three specialists. It’s where she manages to make contact with the _Iliad_ , with the unfortunate task of giving bad news to Hartley.

“They were everywhere, weren’t they?” Hartley wearily remarks over the radio before giving their coordinates for supply runs.

They then travel to São Paulo, to deliver supplies to a group of analysts holed up in one of Fury’s secret hideouts. Several agents stay behind, which Melinda takes as a sign that there’s a bigger operation being run by Fury that she isn’t privy to.

Then, to Fortaleza, to get the plane refueled.

“I’d say you’re doing a noble thing, if I didn’t know better.” She says as she stands next to Fury, who’s watching the engineers scuttle around.

A grim smile appears on Fury’s face as he shakes his head, holding the thermos of winter melon juice in one hand, and an almost empty mug on the other.

“The world needs SHIELD, whether they like it or not. I’m doing what I can to make sure the transition’s smooth.”

Melinda stares straight ahead. She’s been hearing her infamous nickname being whispered around ever since she stepped into that airfield with Fury. She has no doubt that the news about the Cavalry flying a plane around South America, rescuing agents and dropping supplies will spread and fast. Combining everything she knows and what Fury’s saying, Melinda has a pretty good idea on who he’s planning to pick as a replacement.

“Hill would be a better choice.”

“I’d say the same thing, if Coulson didn’t officially die before New York. The man is a master tactician— plus, he has a handle on Stark, Barton and Romanoff more than anyone in SHIELD. But right now, Coulson’s in a better position to rebuild.”

“He _died_. For SHIELD.” He’s been through so much, Melinda thinks, and it’s unfair of Fury to give Coulson this kind of burden… after _everything_.

“Everyone will be surprised for a while and then they’ll remember where they work. They’ll get over it.” Fury replies, “Of course, I’m not expecting everyone to go back to the fold, but SHIELD needs to rebuild and you’ll have to let them know who’s leading the way… the Cavalry _is_ associated with Coulson.”

Melinda closes her eyes and thinks back on the last couple of days. For a moment, she allows herself to think about what could have happened if she had chosen to go back to the team in that roadside motel.

Maybe she wouldn’t be flying a plane around South America close to forty hours.

Or maybe not. The odds for the team’s rejection or acceptance were quite even.

She exhales, slowly, as she becomes more aware of the metallic clangs and the rough voices of the engineering team around them. When she opens her eyes, she finds Fury sipping his mug. The thermos is nowhere to be seen.

“Mom will want that container back.” She informs him before walking back to the plane.

Melinda hears a fond snort, “She’ll get it back.”

* * *

Havana was supposed to be the last detour before they head to Reykjavik.

That is, until they detect a weak SOS in the SHIELD frequency originating from the North Atlantic.

* * *

Simmons clings to her as silent sobs wrack her body. Melinda’s initial shock – that after all she’s done someone was still willing to rush towards her for comfort – quickly subsides when she realizes it’s probably because she’s the only familiar face in this plane. She wills herself to relax and wraps her arms around the younger woman.

Behind her is Fitz, unconscious and encased inside a hyperbaric chamber. The greyish tint on the young man’s skin is so apparent from where she’s standing that Melinda knows that there are no words that can be said about Fitz being okay. Because Fitz will not be okay.

“They don’t think h-he’ll make it.” Simmons hoarsely whispers, “And e-even if he does, h-he’s… he’s not going to be the s-same.”

They gave her dry clothes to change in, but the smell of the ocean is on her hair, on her skin. For a split second, Melinda wonders if the young scientist would start to associate the ocean with desperation and dying, instead of unknown depths just waiting to be discovered. The thought of it makes her tighten her hold on Simmons.

“H-he… Fitz… he gave m-me the… I-I was the better swimmer, h-he said. A-and… and maybe i-if—”

Melinda pulls back and looks the younger woman. Simmons need to rationalize what had happened, she recognizes that, but… “The maybes and the what-ifs will not help you, or Fitz.” 

Simmons blinks, her confusion palpable, and then takes a deep breath. “Ward—he thought Ward could be reasoned with and I didn’t…” she trails off.

Her fingers twitch the moment she hears Ward’s name. Melinda presses her lips together. _Of course_. Of course it was Ward, she angrily thinks before letting her rage dissipate.

“It’s not your fault.” She says as gently as she could; as gently as she could _be._

“I….” Simmons struggles to say anything as she stares at her with red eyes and splotchy cheeks, and it suddenly strikes Melinda that twenty-six-years-old looks this _young._

Her tears start again, “I don’t know how to fix it.” The younger woman contritely says, her tone barely above a whisper that Melinda almost didn’t catch it.

Simmons leans towards her and Melinda doesn’t pull away. She instead puts her arms around Simmons, who seems to be getting smaller by the minute, and keeps steady. She isn’t the best person for this – she never was, even before Bahrain – but she knows what it’s like, needing someone to hold on to when it feels like she’s starting to crumble.

She’s on the verge of deciding to go with Fury to bring down Garrett and beat the living daylights out of Grant Ward, when Simmons shifts, “Could you p-please stay? J-just for a little while?” she asks in between sobs.

Melinda stills.

“Though i-it’s okay if y-you can’t. You’re flying the p-plane.”

“I can stay.” She says simply.

Simmons attempts to smile but her face quickly crumples.

Melinda wordlessly leads the younger woman to the nearest chair and makes her sit. She then takes a blanket and wraps it around Simmons before taking another chair and placing it beside her.

The plane rattles around them as they sit side by side. Melinda watches Fitz, wondering if death would have been a better alternative to whatever it is he’s going to face in the future. Simmons numbly stares at the same space, her hands gripping the blanket like it’s the last threads of her composure.

Revenge can wait.

* * *

“Agent May?”

Agent Koenig – Billy, she thinks – hovers by the door, uncertain on whether he should enter.

She looks at Simmons, who had fallen asleep on the couch, before quietly making her way out of the room.

“The plane’s been refueled and supplies for the _Iliad_ have been loaded.” He reports in a hushed tone since they’re still in the sickbay before handing her the flight roster, “Your team is on standby for departure.”

Melinda scans the document, “Any word from Fury?” The former director changed his plans slightly when he decided that his former protégé needed a little help. She, on the other hand, is to assist the _Iliad_ with whatever they need. She’ll receive a message when she’s needed.

“He said to tell you that Garret’s dead but Ward managed to escape.” Koenig makes a little nod before adding, “And that Director Coulson’s _en_ route.”

She hands him back the file, “Tell the team ETD’s in five minutes.”

Koenig blinks in confusion, “Wait, you’re not going to wait for them? They’ll be here in… twenty-three minutes.” He says, looking at his watch.

“No.” she curtly answers and goes back to the room to get her jacket.

She makes sure that the blanket adequately covers the sleeping Simmons and takes one last look at Fitz’s unconscious form in the infirmary bed before heading out.

“Please don’t leave.”

Melinda stiffens when she hears Simmons’ voice. She briefly considers pretending she didn’t hear the younger woman and just leave but immediately rejects the thought. Simmons deserves better than that.

She turns around and sees Simmons pulling herself to a sitting position, watching her with groggy eyes.

“I’m sorry but I have to.”

“Are you coming back?” If she’s a little more generous with how she thinks the team sees her, she could probably say that she hears a pleading tone in the younger woman’s tone. But her voice is also rough from exhaustion and Melinda dismisses the idea.

“I don’t know.” Melinda answers truthfully.

“But you’re still us— with SHIELD?”

“Yes.”

The tension in Simmons’ shoulders dissipates as relief appears on her face.

“Keep safe, Agent May.” She says. She gives her a smile— a small, sad smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She has seen that look from specialists broken by missions gone wrong and she regrets seeing it on Simmons’. 

Melinda supposes it’s going to be one of her many sins, then.

She can feel Simmons watching her as she leaves. As she passes through the doorway, Koenig is still there, waiting for her. Melinda stares at him stoically and he seems to shirk away from her gaze.

An idea crosses her mind and she pulls out the small envelope containing the flash drive from her jacket. 

Melinda passes the envelope to Koenig.

“Give this to the Director in private.”

* * *

“We were planning to cloak the _Iliad_ and disappear when we heard news that the Cavalry was flying around South America rescuing everyone.”

Hartley knows she dislikes that nickname, but she seems to be using it for the sake of Agent Calderon, formerly a Level 7 agent.

Melinda has been silently following them through the carrier’s almost never-ending hallways, with the supplies and the sight of a person they can trust met with relief.

“Why didn’t you?”

Calderon, who seems like he was going to pass out any minute from exhaustion, glances at her, “That’s the SHIELD we want to rebuild.” He says gruffly, “One that doesn’t leave its people behind.”

She looks at Calderon with a measured gaze and nods her head.

At the same time, the conversation she had with Fury repeats over and over at the back of her mind.

* * *

“Do you really think a man raised from the dead by a one-eyed trickster can be trusted to rebuild SHIELD?”

Robert Gonzales, a level 9 SHIELD agent and the Commander of the _Iliad_ , throws her this question after requesting for her presence in the plane’s medbay. He’s sitting up in the bed, his right leg stretched out in front of him, in a cast. The surviving medical team in the _Iliad_ managed to take most of the pieces of shrapnel from his leg, but further surgery is required. The medical team that accompanied her – from the SHIELD office in Bogota – confirmed this medical opinion, prompting Gonzales’ team to convince him that a surgery off-ship was a better option than being in pain for the rest of his life.

He’s also obviously not confident with Phil Coulson’s leadership skills judging from that sentence alone.

Coulson might have his faults, Melinda admits that, but leadership isn’t one of them.

“A one-eyed trickster.” She slowly repeats.

“How else would you describe Fury?”

Paranoid. Mistrusts everyone he didn’t personally vet. Hypervigilant. Has secrets that have secrets of its own. Manipulative. Probably has a bionic eye behind that damn eyepatch. Cynical. Almost always five steps ahead in any scenario thought up of. Currently addicted to winter melon tea.

“Unconventional.” Melinda says instead.

Gonzales’ snorts, “He might have been unconventional, but the Fury I knew was much more than that. Much worst.” He says and shifts on the bed, “Coulson’s cut from the same cloth.”

Melinda straightens up, squaring her shoulders. She clenches her jaw as various responses – all of them inappropriate for any situation – runs through her mind. A comparison to Fury might be a compliment to some; it rarely is for her.

Finally, “If that’s your view on Coulson, then you didn’t know Fury as well as you thought.”

Gonzales looks at her, seemingly pondering on what she said. When he doesn’t say anything else, she gives him a polite nod and leaves.

On her way to back to the cockpit, she passes by Dr. Weaver, who had chosen to accompany Gonzales to the hospital. She’s almost through the door when she decides to go back to the doctor.

“Dr. Weaver, a word?”

* * *

She receives a text after bringing Gonzales and several others to a medical facility just outside New York, as Hill directed. It was in a simple code, which she easily translates to a date, a time and a location.

Melinda commits the details to memory before deleting it.

Then she heads back to Pennsylvania.

* * *

When she gets back home, her mother wordlessly hands her a brown envelope containing a passport, a credit card, a New York driver’s license and an apartment lease in the same city under the name of Karina Wong, and a thick wad of cash consisting of twenty-dollar bills.

“Mom….” she trails off as she looks at her mother, who only shakes her head.

Melinda had been relieved that her mother understood her decision choosing SHIELD over her agency. She wanted to get taken seriously – as much as a tiny Asian-American girl can be taken seriously – without the scrutiny or the pressure of being the daughter of another agent, whom she discovers later on, has a reputation as fearsome as it was legendary.

“Thank you.” She says quietly.

“I cannot dissuade you from doing what you want. It’s the least I could do.” Her mother replies.

Yes, Lian May understood; and yes, she has utmost faith in her abilities, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t worry. And for the first time since Melinda entered SHIELD, Lian will have more difficulty knowing if she’s okay in case she doesn’t call for weeks.

“Nicholas told me what he asked you to do— for Phillip.” 

Melinda’s body sags and she shakes her head, “It was still my decision in the end.” She answers.

“Even with the possible consequences?”

That look of betrayal on Coulson’s face and the terror, the hurt, and the anger in kid’s faces when they thought she was a traitor flashes in her mind. Before she took on the mission, she thought she could bear their rejection if they find out.

“Maybe I didn’t take into consideration a Hydra uprising.” She says as a lump forms in her throat and she tries to shake away the tears that are starting to sting her eyes.

“Oh, Melinda.” Her mother gathers her in her arms, “You should not beat yourself up for something you thought was right.” She whispers and tightly embraces her.

The exhaustion, the regret and the guilt come crashing down on her as her mother holds her. For the first time after Coulson’s resurrection, Melinda May allows herself to cry.

* * *

Koenig updates her about the team. She didn’t ask for it, but she gets them anyway; always on a Sunday, always before dinner.

It helps her keep track of the days when everything is a blur.

* * *

The ceiling fan hangs precariously above their heads as its slow, ominous spinning keeps a bit of air flowing in the room. Someone upstairs flushes the toilet and the walls shake as the water rushes down the pipes.

Melinda sits near the window, making sure that she’s not visible from the outside. The garish neon lights from the street are dancing against the white curtains and it makes her eyes hurt if she looks at it too hard. Outside, the swearing and shouting in Cantonese gets drowned out by a drunk-yet-over-enthusiastic karaoke singing of a Frank Sinatra song.

Hong Kong may be a lot of things, especially to some specialists, but boring is not one of them.

She watches Fury, who’s looking at the laptop screen with the intensity of a bird watching its prey. Hydra is regrouping, and they have the manpower and the money to do it as fast as they can. Fury went to Zurich for intel regarding Hydra’s finances, which immediately brought him here.

A middleman for Hydra and the Hong Kong triad is currently playing in underground card game. They’re waiting for him to either win, lose, or die.

She stopped watching a while ago— the slow descent to losing so much money was boring to watch. And judging from Fury’s exasperated sigh, the man’s luck hasn’t changed. 

“Coulson needs you.” Fury says suddenly although he hasn’t torn his gaze away from the screen, “Talk to him.”

He’s been trying to broach the subject ever since she arrived. It seems like he’s tired of trying to be subtle about it.

“He’s rebuilding SHIELD; he needs someone he can trust.” She replies, “He doesn’t trust me, not anymore. I don’t blame him.”

“Is that what you really think? Or is that guilt speaking?”

She had time to think about her decision to leave—more than enough, as she finds herself re-examining it every time she goes to sleep.

“You do know I wanted you in that team because I knew you’d have Coulson’s back?”

“I still have his back.”

“So why are you here?”

“Not being by his side doesn’t mean I’m not protecting him.” Melinda answers. “Right now, he should be focusing on rebuilding, not chasing Hydra.” She says, finally. And she’ll make sure that every Hydra cell she encounters will be eliminated and burned to the ground, if only to help ease the weight from Coulson’s shoulders. It’s the least she could do.

“He’s not going to hold off the side-effects of T.A.H.I.T.I. forever.”

She thinks about that a lot too.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have made him the new Director of SHIELD.” Fury gives her a very unimpressed look. “Billy knows who to call when that happens.” She answers simply.

Fury grunts, which she takes as that of frustration, but she doesn’t know if it’s because of her or because of the man they’re following.

“He’s down to his last hundred grand.” Fury announces, leaning back on his chair and stretching his legs. He watches as she stands up and takes her leather jacket from the chair, “Call the man, May.” He says but she ignores him as she makes her way to the door.

Melinda slips out of the rickety room to go down to the busy street and disappears in the crowd.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry it took almost ten months for the next update. I never intended for the hiatus to be this long. To make up for the wait, this chapter is eight thousand words long.
> 
> Characters aren't mine, blah blah, mistakes and errors are all mine.

II.

Melinda has been to a lot of terrible bars.

There’s one in Vladivostok, where the vodka was so bad that anyone who’d drink it could possibly die right there and then. There’s that one in Macau, where everything tasted like it’s made from the sad tears of the losers in the casinos (there’s probably a bar exactly like it in Vegas). And then there’s one in Manila, where the drinks were okay but drinking while watching a boxing match between little people and drag queens surrounded by cheering drunk tourists and laughing expats, left a weird taste in her mouth (Coulson would say it’s not as awful as she remembers it, but it was definitely surreal).

Although this bar – this grimy, dingy, shady hole with its disgustingly sticky floors and walls smelling of cheap tobacco; with its ominous neon lights flickering and its only tv playing bootlegged Ukrainian soap opera – might probably be the most terrible bar she has set foot in.

She orders a bottle of beer, not trusting the cleanliness of the glass to order a whiskey, before looking for the corner booth for her meeting. It’s dark, but she can clearly see an outline of a person sitting against the wall, waiting in the shadows. 

Melinda wordlessly sits down, putting the bottle of beer in front of her.

“You have no idea how much I was hoping they’d send you.” The person shifts from the darkness and Bobbi Morse comes into the light. 

The last time Melinda saw her, it was in the _Iliad_ ’s medbay, still with blonde hair, convincing Gonzales that off-ship surgery is the best option for him. 

And the last she’s heard of her was that she’s been recruited by Hydra.

Melinda shrugs her shoulders. They used to have protocols for this, when agents would risk their cover to make contact. But those protocols need manpower and it’s something they’re severely lacking right now.

Her eyes dart up. There’s a convex mirror on the top corner of the wall and from where she’s seated, she can see the sleeping drunk at the other side of the room and the bartender who didn’t even look at her when she entered.

Nothing feels off, but there’s still a chance this meeting could break Morse’s cover and get her killed. 

“It’s safe here.” Morse states in a low tone, sensing her apprehension.

To meet, maybe. The bartender’s cleaning the glasses with something that looks like it had cleaned a car engine first. She also never saw any sanitation permit.

“It’s a front for the Ukrainian mob.” Morse explains. “Nowadays, Hydra prefers places that serve five-hundred-dollar wines and preferably without month-old vomit on the floor.”

And that explains the soap opera. And the floor.

It’s ironic that they’re hiding out like rats while the people they’re hunting are out in the open.

“Your SOS?” Melinda asks.

Morse straightens up. Tension appears on her shoulders while shame appears on her face, with both quickly disappearing when she takes a deep breath, “Hydra is brainwashing a SHIELD agent— Kara Palamas. Kidnapped her from a safehouse.”

She doesn’t say anything as she waits for Morse to continue, knowing that the breaks in the conversation are merely perfunctory and there wasn’t a need for her to say anything.

The silence lingers. Morse takes a drink from her beer.

Melinda still doesn’t say anything.

“I had to…” the younger agent sighs, “I sold her out.”

The breath she lets out when she realizes what had happened sounds like a hiss. 

Morse miscalculated her options and Palamas is paying the price. 

The other woman looks away and leans on the chair. The dark corner partly hides her face from view. 

“Look, I know I can’t ask someone else to undo my sins, but…” Morse trails off. Melinda knows what it’s like to make difficult choices— to choose a lesser evil at the expense of her conscience (and her soul).

“She doesn’t deserve this—nobody does.”

If this was the old SHIELD, the SHIELD before the fall, they’d tell her that Palamas knew what she signed up for. It was the prevalent opinion of the higher-level agents: if losing one agent meant protecting hundreds more, or if losing a few lives meant saving millions, then those losses will not be in vain.

(When the darkness and the sound of the city doesn’t lull her to sleep and the pangs of loneliness strike, she finds herself wondering what would have happened if SHIELD knew the truth about Bahrain; if they would have patted her on the back and told her that killing the girl was for the greater good)

“I know that there’ll come a point where sacrificing ourselves will be the only option.” Morse says, “But as long as there’s another way… she’s not going to be an acceptable loss.”

Melinda’s heard that line countless of times before, back when running their own ops was just a dream, when calling the shots was not even at the forefront of their minds. It was not a view commonly shared in Fury’s inner circle but it’s the reason why Coulson was in it. 

Fury’s good eye.

“He told you that before you got shipped out?”

Morse shakes her head, “When he welcomed everyone from the _Iliad_ back into the fold.” She answers, not needing to ask who ‘he’ was.

So, it comes down to this: an organization once five thousand strong down to two hundred and fifty—three hundred if she’s being generous. 

And they can’t lose any more.

Melinda lets out a deep breath. This isn’t her call to make.

“I’ll see what I can do.” 

Morse’s shoulders visibly sag as relief appears on her face. Melinda finishes her beer, but as she fishes out cash from her pocket, the younger woman waves her off.

“Drink’s on me.”

She raises a brow.

“I just need you to send this…” Morse slides a postcard on the table towards her, “For the ex.”

It seems innocuous at first glance, but Melinda can see that the stamp on the postcard isn’t enough for its supposed destination.

She takes it and puts in her jacket, “I’ll make sure it gets to him.” Melinda says, slipping out of the booth. 

As she leaves, she warily eyes the neatly-stacked glasses behind the bar and the bartender who still doesn’t look up when she passes by.

She memorizes his face. Just in case.

* * *

There’s an emptiness inside her, one that she can’t quite explain. It’s not that recurring pain, the one that could probably tear her soul if she allows it. Neither is it the numbness that no amount of alcohol can abate.

It’s just a dull hollowness that seemed to have carved itself in her heart.

* * *

“So… did you and Phil break up?”

They’re speeding across the Valdivian rainforest, being chased by well-armed goons hired by a Hydra cell in the region, when a deafening explosion makes the road tremble and a bright, fiery mess lights up the sky behind them.

She doesn’t remember agreeing to conducting an op in pitch-black darkness, although she should have expected this kind of curveball when she saw Clint Barton cheekily grinning at her when she stepped inside the quinjet.

Melinda focuses on driving the jeep – it’s military grade but unfortunately, the most inappropriate escape vehicle during a gunfight in a middle of the forest at night – keeping a heavy foot on the gas pedal while committing to memory everything that she can see after the explosion. Bullets whiz near her head and humid air whips on her face as they try to outrun three armored cars and the pungent smell of sulfur. 

Thinking about Phil Coulson right now is very inappropriate for this situation.

“Inquiring minds need to know.” Clint shouts amidst the chaos. He’s straddled on the passenger’s seat, calmly aiming at the men behind them, “The probability of dying tonight is very high.” He says, and she hears another explosion.

“No, it isn’t.” she mutters, gritting her teeth. She doesn’t have to look at the rearview mirror to know that there’s only one car left pursuing them, but she knows that the explosions will attract attention.

She quickly decides that the package they stole _isn’t_ going to blow up if it gets tossed around in the backseat before making a hard turn to the right and going off-road for their escape.

Clint yelps in surprise but manages to keep himself steady.

Melinda avoids the bigger trees as branches continuously slam onto the vehicle. She maintains their speed, mindful of the muddy terrain.

It’s been a while since she had to improvise an escape like this, but her training and instincts immediately kicked in. It’s like riding a bike.

A bike on fire crossing a road on fire.

“We taking the scenic route?” Clint asks as he shifts in the seat, facing the front and gripping the door handle with one hand while holding on to his bow with the other.

She doesn’t pay any attention to him, choosing to listen to the squeal of the tires on the ground and the way the engine rumbles. She’s been through this situation enough times to know that listening to the chatterbox beside her is the quickest way to miss the part where they start getting stuck in the mud.

“I think they’re gone.” Clint says after a few minutes. The sound of gunfire had steadily decreased the farther she took them inside the forest.

“You think?”

“ _Maybe_ they’re gone?” Clint replies and cranes his neck as he looks behind them. “Yep, gone.”

Melinda doesn’t slow down but she shifts the wheel and drives the car to a different direction. Clint exhales loudly but keeps vigilant, not loosening his grip on his bow.

They find themselves back on the road.

“So… you and Phil?”

“Were good friends.”

“You can let up the past tense, Mel. I know he’s alive. Everybody in the team does—well, maybe except Stark and Banner… And Thor… okay, that doesn’t sound like everybody…” he trails off, “Everybody in the team who was SHIELD knows he’s alive.”

Melinda rolls her eyes. Everybody who was in SHIELD are a bunch of gossips.

“Aww, Mel. C’mon.”

“Phil and I…. used to be good friends.” She answers, finally.

She feels the incredulous look he gives her but this time, she refocuses on the dark road ahead, ending the conversation.

The rest of the drive was in relative silence. They get to the rendezvous point – a clearing that’s perfect for landing a small plane – in the border nearing Chile.

She parks their escape vehicle a few meters away from the empty field. Clint quickly moves to get the package they stowed in the backseat before hurrying to her side.

“I’m sorry about you two being… past tense.”

Melinda sharply looks at him, “When people ask questions, they usually go directly to the point. Not around it.”

“Maria said you two had a falling out.”

Fallout is such a mild word.

She considers whether she’d get less questions if she tries to be cryptic but decides against it. It would work on most people but not on Clint (or Romanoff).

“I betrayed his trust.” She simply says.

The expression that appears on Clint’s face is inscrutable. Melinda attributes that to the darkness rather than him being unreadable.

The quinjet materializes in front of them and the landing bay lowers down. 

She glances at Clint, “Next time, leave the subtle questioning to Nat.”

He flashes her a confused look, but Melinda has seen that face before – many, many times before – that she merely counters with a raised brow.

“For the record, I was really curious if you two had a thing. That was all me.” He finally says, just as they take a step inside the quinjet. “We’re just concerned.”

“I’m fine.” She automatically says. 

(In the rare times that Bahrain doesn’t invade her sleep, she’d dream of Phil telling her that she might have lost everything when SHIELD fell, but she hasn’t lost him.

There’s always an ache in her chest whenever she wakes up from those dreams)

“But the new Director needs support.”

Clint regards her words for a few seconds and nods his head, “He has it.” 

He looks like he wants to say something else, but he shrugs and starts walking ahead of her, climbing up the landing bay with the package slung over his shoulder while carrying his bow.

“Honey, we’re hooome. We brought you a portable brainwashing machine.”

* * *

Sometimes, Melinda thinks it was a joke— Fury trusting a bunch of broken people to rebuild a decidedly flawed organization and hoping that everything’s going to turn out differently.

(At the back of her mind, she hears Coulson’s voice telling her that she isn’t broken)

* * *

She can count in one hand the number of people she expects would come to her door during their hour of need.

Skye wasn’t one of them.

“Hi.”

Melinda stoically observes the younger woman for a second before opening the door wider to let her in.

“Coulson said if you don’t want to be found, you won’t be found.” Skye’s voice is tinged with slight nervousness, as the door clicks to a close. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

“How did you find me?”

Skye makes a gesture with her hands, palms up, “With a computer?”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why?”

She tilts her head and waits for Skye to answer her own question. The girl lets out an anxious laugh.

“Maybe I’m here to… convince you to come back?”

“Does Coulson know you’re here?”

Skye makes a face, “No? Well, I don’t know, he’s the director now, he probably knows everything.” She answers, before shoving her hands in her pockets, “Look, I… we want you back. AC—the Director doesn’t say much but everybody knows he wants you back.”

Melinda can’t help but sigh out loud.

“If you don’t want to come back for Coulson, maybe come back for me?” Skye says but she immediately backtracks, “Or maybe not me. Come back for Fitz, for Simmons.” Her shoulders drop, “It’s not the same without you.”

She waits for a beat.

“Is everything alright, Skye?” she asks, although Melinda knows that the answer to that is a resounding no.

A pained smile appears on Skye’s face, “I feel like I made you leave.”

Melinda sighs and motions for the younger woman to follow her into the kitchen, “You didn’t make me leave.”

“So, who did?”

She remembers Coulson’s words and allows herself a bitter smile, knowing that the Skye wouldn’t see it. “No one.” She says as she makes her way behind the kitchen counter.

“Then why are you out here and not with us?”

Melinda doesn’t respond. Instead she takes out two mugs from the cupboard and prepares tea for her and Skye.

“That sounded a little too clingy, didn’t it?”

Melinda snorts. It sounded a little like Coulson, if she’s going to be honest about… well, everything.

She hears Skye fidget in her seat, her restless energy disrupting the calm that had long enveloped her apartment. It might have bothered her before, but right now she finds it a welcome disturbance. 

It’s good to have company once in a while.

“How do you do it?”

Melinda turns around and carefully sets the steaming mugs on top of the counter. The question is not about the tea. “Do what?”

“Not feel anything.” Skye answers, “Get over what Ward did, while back in the base all of us are just… not.”

Melinda keeps her face expressionless, “You think I’ve gotten over what Ward did?”

“Look at you, at your apartment. Everything’s so… Zen.” The younger woman replies, “And you guys had a… thing. If I had, like, half your skills I’d be out there, hunting him down and setting Hydra things on fire.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” she asks, slowly.

“Uh, Avengers-related things?” Skye answers like it’s the most obvious thing, “I mean, Coulson said you’re with Fury and I just assumed…” she trails off, when she sees her cock her head to the side, “You’re not doing any Avenging?”

“No.” Not really.

“Oh.”

Melinda takes a sip from her mug and Skye does the same. The younger woman’s anxiety had decreased somewhat, and it made the kitchen a little more serene.

She always felt that there was something turbulent about Skye—her name should evoke tranquility, the sunshine that comes with a vast, bright blue sky with nary a cloud in sight. Maybe that’s what Coulson first saw when he decided to bring her in the team. 

(When she first saw Skye, she was reminded of dark, heavy clouds carrying a raging storm that could destroy them all)

It didn’t take long for her to see what Coulson saw.

“So, how do you do it?” Skye asks again. Melinda raises a brow, and she continues, “Look like you’ve gotten over it even when you haven’t?”

Melinda’s doesn’t know what to do with other people’s emotions, especially when they need comforting. But when it comes to dealing with _her_ emotions… well, she’s got a good hold on that.

“It’s not about looking like you got over it.” She starts, “It’s about mining your anger. Saving it. So that you can use all of it to bring Ward down when the time comes.”

“So, you’re waiting?”

“Better to wait than to waste it on a tantrum.”

Skye frowns and looks at her cup of tea, “I wish I had that kind of hate-fu.”

She was reaching out, Melinda thinks as she wraps her fingers around her own mug, and she knows how difficult it might be for Skye to do that.

Melinda takes a deep breath.

“I can teach you a few techniques.” She says, finally. She watches as Skye quickly looks up, “But it’s going to be difficult, considering I’m off-base.”

Skye looks at her, trying to determine if her offer is sincere. Melinda doesn’t look away and the non-expression on her face stays the same.

After a few seconds, a smile appears on the younger woman’s face.

“Don’t worry, I’m a fast learner.”

* * *

“I’m happy I found a family in SHIELD, but it also sucks that I also found out what a kid with divorced parents feel like, you know?”

(Skye says this during one of her ‘surprise’ visits, although for Melinda it wasn’t much of a surprise— there’s a pattern to it: it’s always on a Friday after she arrives from a mission. She doesn’t know whether to be impressed that the younger woman manages to find out when her op is over or be disturbed that Koenig’s not very good with keeping mission details on the lid.)

“Not like I see you as my mom and Coulson as my dad. It’s just… how everyone sees you. He just worries a lot.”

(Melinda acknowledged the statement with a nod and nothing more.)

* * *

Hartley downs her third cup of coffee for the morning and if it’s any other agent, Melinda would be concerned about the liquid intake. But Isabelle Hartley’s ability to drink anything in a recon mission and not have to go to the bathroom to relieve herself for a long time was legendary within SHIELD (and worried the doctors).

“Heard there’s a position open back in the base.” Hartley says as she scans the street through the diner’s large windows, “Admin position, cos it turns out we don’t have anyone in that department, even on the _Iliad_. Answers directly to the Boss. Paperwork, filing, those kinds of things.”

Melinda ignores Hartley and pretends to read the newspaper as they wait for the tracker to go online.

“The pay’s shitty, though. Minimum wage that rivals Wisconsin’s, maybe a kiss from Coulson and his eternal gratitude.”

She glares at Hartley, “What are you doing?”

“Making conversation so that we’d look like two friends having a cup of coffee instead of a sad lesbian widow sitting across an angry Asian woman in her self-imposed exile.”

She must give Hartley some points for avoiding using ‘tiny’ in her description. She chooses not to reply, ignoring the rest of the statement and settles for glaring at the other woman instead.

“Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great you’re in the field. Makes the ones who stayed on fighting feel a little safer. But the people you left back in the Playground… well, that’s another story. A sad story— as sad as mine, actually, a woman who lost the love of her life.”

Melinda rolls her eyes and goes back to fake-reading the newspaper. The one thing she likes about a recon mission is that it’s a mostly solitary op involving a team: you wait in your post, you observe from a distance, you report.

This is the type of reconnaissance mission she doesn’t like.

“I could train your kid.”

This time, she puts down the newspaper and looks directly at Hartley, “My… what?”

“Your kid. The one you fished out of a van.” Hartley replies.

“Skye?”

“Yeah. Boss thinks she’ll make an excellent analyst. I think she’ll make an exceptional specialist.”

“She has potential.” Melinda agrees carefully. For both.

Hartley smirks, “You said the same thing about Morse and that kid saved my life.” She says and finishes her coffee, “It’s only temporary, of course. Until you get back.”

It’s a loaded statement, with so many assumptions that she can’t parse them all in one go.

“You can’t run after Hydra forever.” Hartley remarks and signals the waitress to refill her cup.

_You can’t run away from Coulson forever_ is what she meant.

* * *

As the rain pours outside the safehouse in El Puyo, she receives an update regarding Skye’s training.

It’s going well.

* * *

The cut across her cheek throbs while she settles on a bag of frozen peas as an improvised ice pack for the bruise on her forehead. Supplies are getting low— her bruises can be taken care of with anything frozen inside her fridge, but the cut on her face could use some healing cream. It’s the type of wound that leaves an ugly scar and she’d rather not have that.

(It’s not out of vanity; a scar on the face is an identifying mark)

Right now, however, all she needs is some tea, maybe a sandwich and a hot bath before a (hopefully) good night’s rest.

As she shuffles around the kitchen, waiting for the water to come to a boil, a knock on the door puts her on alert.

It’s the middle of the week; Skye wouldn’t be here until Friday.

She switches off the stove and puts down the peas before silently crossing the floor. She takes a deep breath and takes a glance through the peephole, her still-sore body ready for a fight.

Outside, she sees an agitated Simmons, who seems more than ready to burst out a speech the moment the door opens.

Melinda bites back a sigh – her plan for a hot bath and an early night is off the table now – before opening the door.

“Agent May, before you say anything, I just want you to know that…” Simmons’ eyes widen as she stops talking when she sees her face. The expression on Simmons’ face changes: from anxious and uncertain to full-blown worry.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…” Simmons stops again, her eyes darting sideways trying to determine if the neighbors are listening in, “I can leave if you want.” She weakly offers.

The stoic expression on Melinda’s face doesn’t disappear as she steps aside to let the younger woman come in, noting the bags that Simmons brought with her.

“Have you cleaned that cut? It should be covered while it heals.” Simmons says as she quickly enters, setting down one of the bags on the side table before rummaging in her other bag. “Here.” She says and hands her a roll of gauze and looks back in the bag, “And here.” She says again, giving her a tube of healing cream.

Melinda wordlessly accepts them but flashes a questioning look at the young agent.

Simmons bites her lower lip, “Er, paperwork for the supplies is quite disorganized at the moment so I… took a few things?”

She quirks a brow, “You stole supplies?”

“It’s not stealing.” Simmons objects, “You’re an agent in the field who _needs_ them. Filling up the paperwork is mere formality.”

Melinda looks at the healing cream and the gauze and looks back at Simmons, “You came here to give me supplies?” She asks even if she knows that she’s not here for a personal supply run. 

Uncertainty flits across the younger woman’s face, “Agent May, I…” she takes a deep breath and starts again, “First of all, I feel that it’s important for you to know that Skye has nothing to do with this. I was _relentless_ in my pursuit to know your location and I might have told her that I would tell the Director she knows where you are.”

In the short time that she spent with Simmons in the Bus, she’s learned that there’s a ritual involved when the younger woman is about to say something… relatively unpleasant. Usually, it involves a speech.

“Of course, I would never do such thing. Unless, of course, it’s an emergency and your life is on the line.”

It’s a rehearsed speech – it’s Simmons’ after all – but the words gracelessly tumble out of her lips as her jitters take over.

“And Skye told me to tell you – well, report. Report sounds better because telling you makes it sound like I’m simply parroting her words – report to you that I made sure nobody followed me. I know some basic techniques, Trip taught me, I took notes but—”

Now she’s just babbling.

“Simmons.”

The younger woman stops. Melinda motions to the other bag, raising a brow.

Simmons glances behind her and looks back at her, “I brought dinner?” she says, giving her a hesitant smile, “It’s good for four people.”

Her eyes narrow, “Am I supposed to expect two more guests?”

Simmons quickly shakes her head, “I just… I couldn’t decide on what to get for dinner and I didn’t know what you like so… I bought all the best sellers for takeaway.” She explains. Her brows furrow again as she stares at her cheek, “You need to put some healing cream on that cut. It’s going to scar.”

She remembers Hartley’s offhand remark about the purported sad state of the people she supposedly left behind in the Playground. She’s never noticed it with Skye, but then, that girl had an air of melancholy around her despite the cheerful demeanour. Standing this near to Simmons, though, she can see that nothing is well.

Melinda glances at the tube of ointment in her hand before looking at Simmons again, “Kitchen’s at the back.” She says, motioning to the archway behind her.

Simmons flashes a grateful smile before taking her bags and carrying them past her.

It takes Melinda less than a minute to attend to the cut on her face, applying the medicine and covering it with gauze but she takes her time. A nervous Simmons is not the same as a nervous Skye.

When she gets back to the kitchen, she finds plates and plastic cutlery neatly laid out on the table, and the food out of the containers.

She forgot how efficient Simmons is.

“I’m sorry, I should have—”

“It’s fine.” Melinda says, belatedly hoping that her tone didn’t come off too sharp.

She contemplates on offering the younger woman a bottle of beer but decides against it. Simmons didn’t come here for a friend.

“Tea?”

“Tea sounds wonderful.”

Melinda walks to the stove and switches it on again as Simmons sits down behind the counter. The smell of the food – from the Thai place beside the deli where she usually gets take-outs from – wafts to her nose, making her stomach grumble.

She takes silverware from one of the drawers, and hands them over to her guest.

(there’s something about plastic cutlery that makes eating with them feel farcical)

Neither of them say anything as they start eating dinner.

“Director Coulson’s doing fine.” Simmons starts when she couldn’t take the silence anymore, “There’s some elevated neural activity in his brain but his vitals are excellent so it’s not at all worrying.”

“And Fitz is doing better… progress is slow, but that’s expected. I’ve read countless of literature about his condition and I’ve explained to the others how to help… and how not to help.” She says, pushing her food around her plate, “He woke up nine days after you left. Thank you for sending Dr. Weaver; she’s been a tremendous help.”

Melinda listens as Simmons rattles off a status report on the remaining members of their team, with a passing mention of Mack (who’s very symmetrical and looks good in a tank top).

“And you?” she asks when Simmons finishes.

The younger woman glances down to her plate, a somber expression flashing across her features before looking back at her with a genial smile, “I’m doing fine.” She answers with a clear voice.

She notes the stiff posture and the way Simmons’ hands had discreetly folded itself on her lap.

The impatient side of her wants to prod; to dig for the information that’s taking too long to get to her. But she also recognizes that this is Simmons’ way of processing… whatever this is going to end up being.

So, she resumes eating her dinner, pretending not to notice that Simmons has completely stopped doing anything.

“I want to volunteer for a mission to infiltrate Hydra.”

The kettle screeches behind her.

Melinda keeps the impassive expression on her face as she stands up to turn off the stove.

“I know I’m not the ideal candidate for it—I’m absolutely shite at lying and improvisation, and I have zero field training, which is a _recipe_ for disaster. Ward’s also still out there and he’s definitely going to be a wildcard.”

She turns her back to Simmons, pressing her lips in disapproval as she takes the mugs from the cupboard.

“But it’s the science division of a Hydra cell, which gives a point to my favor. And a long-term undercover operation like this would require a lot of preparation, which is something I excel in.”

Melinda mentally counts to five and lets out a deep breath. She turns around, and looks at Simmons directly in the eye, “And when they ask you about your loyalties?”

The tone she uses is soft, but she makes sure there’s a lethal undercurrent to it; a threat under the guise of something innocuous.

Simmons barely flinches.

“My loyalties are with science.”

She almost believed her.

Almost.

“I won’t be deciding this.” Melinda says, finally.

Simmons shakes her head, “I came here on the off-chance that you can help me make the right decision.”

It’s a lie.

The façade’s off and the tremendous stress that’s been hiding behind that steely composure spreads across her features. If Simmons was talking to any other person, they’d reach out and give words of comfort. But Melinda knows those things are fleeting.

“What do _you_ want?”

“To volunteer my scientific knowledge in the operation and enable—”

“Not _that_.” Melinda shakes her head, “What’s the reason—your reason?”

“Fitz.”

In hindsight, it’s not like she didn’t know the answer to that question.

She turns her attention back to the tea, deliberately moving slower. This kind of long-term undercover operation requires an advance party, not only to protect the embedded agent and the flow of intel, but also to establish a way to disrupt the enemy’s everyday operations.

Simmons is not the advance party.

Melinda sets the steaming mug in front of younger woman, who murmurs a thank you.

There’s already a decision made. Simmons wouldn’t have come here if she didn’t have one. And she seems determined to do it.

“There isn’t a wrong decision.” Melinda says, “Only wrong motivations.”

Simmons glances up from her tea to look at her and there’s a split second where Melinda thinks there’s going to be a polite thank you for a bit of wisdom that she could get from a fortune cookie.

A contemplative expression appears on Simmons’ face and she gives her a small nod instead.

“I appreciate your advice, Agent May.”

* * *

She was in a safehouse in Belgium, washing off blood from her shaking hands, when she receives an update regarding FitzSimmons.

It’s not going well.

* * *

“Just because Coulson told you to leave doesn’t mean you should go around telling others to leave.”

It wasn’t a Friday, but somehow, she expected Skye to arrive. The younger woman would have wanted answers regarding Simmons. Answers that Coulson wouldn’t give her; answers she couldn’t give to her.

(She knew that there would be petulance, a bit of childishness, and some anger. Skye might be very adaptable compared to FitzSimmons, but it doesn’t mean she likes change.)

If she had been taken aback with Skye’s words she doesn’t show it.

“And just because I allow you to come here doesn’t mean you’re allowed to say anything you want.” She frostily replies.

It was enough to make the anger on Skye’s face dissipate into embarrassment. Skye’s emotional; it’s one of the things she needs to learn how to keep in check if she wants to survive being a spy

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” Skye trails off, eyes wide, “I’m sorry.”

She neither accepts nor rejects the apology and leaves Skye standing by the door, letting her decide if she wants to stay or not.

(Skye stays)

* * *

She goes through the plan, repeatedly running a simulation in her mind, making sure to take in consideration possible interferences, possible mistakes, the things that could, would and will go wrong. She pays no attention to the way the truck was shaking, the smell of the various kinds of fish around her, or the cold air seeping through her thick jacket.

“I miss this.”

Melinda opens her eyes. Natasha’s standing in front of her, beside a humongous tuna, her red hair looking so vibrant against the metal walls of the truck. Her eyes look brighter, and she carries herself with confidence that was absent back in Argentina.

“Really.” Melinda deadpanned and pointedly looks at the bluefin secured on the rope hanging near her head, “You missed this?”

“Not this.” Natasha says, motioning around them, “This.” She says and gestures at the space between them, “Small ops, with no big picture in mind.”

They’re on a time-sensitive mission, an opportunity to destroy a resource hub for budding Hydra cells on this side of the world. But with the current resources SHIELD has (or doesn’t have— it’s a glass half-empty, glass half-full situation), it’s impossible for a raid team to be sent to her position in such a short notice.

The former Strike Team: Delta offered their assistance.

Unfortunately, an op with Romanoff and Barton can only be described as a game of reverse Russian Roulette: it’s suicide, but there’s a chance you’ll live.

“Bringing down Hydra is a small operation for you?”

“You know what I mean.” Natasha answers with a roll of her eyes.

Melinda merely raises a brow and Natasha shrugs.

“Stark and Rogers are always about the big picture.” Natasha’s lips tug downwards, “Whether they’re looking at the same picture is a different matter altogether.” The redhead then motions to the tuna, “When Hill told us about your op, I thought it’s an opportunity to be a cog in the machine again, even for a short while.”

Melinda understands Natasha’s sentiment. Gone were the days where they can go for a little reckless to finish the job, when she was only responsible for herself, Coulson, and the mission.

“Is that your way of saying you miss SHIELD?”

Natasha shrugs again, “SHIELD is an institution and institutions fall with time. It’s the people that should be missed.”

“You got Barton.”

An expression of mock indignation appears on Natasha’s face, “I knew other people in SHIELD.” She says, “Like you. And Coulson. Judith from accounting.” She starts, “And I miss _you_. I miss _Coulson_. I miss you _and_ Coulson.”

She notes the obvious omission of Judith from Accounting, whom she’s never heard of until now. 

“Judith from accounting is currently with Stark Industries’ accounting department.” Natasha replies as if she had asked a question, “What about you? Do you miss anyone from SHIELD?”

It doesn’t take her a second to realize who Natasha means and Melinda’s eyes narrow as she remembers what she said to Barton in that Argentina op.

Before she can say anything, there’s a sharp rap on the side of the driver’s seat, signaling that they’re approaching their destination.

Melinda avoids the row of tuna and readies the false panel at the far end of the wall. Natasha steps in first before Melinda tucks herself inside and closing the panel with a faint click.

They come to a brief stop, and they can hear Barton’s muffled voice, listing down the kinds of fish he’s delivering while the guards conduct a quick inspection of the truck.

A heavy pair of boots approach their position and the owner of those boots are knocking on the goddamn walls. Barton’s voice started to get louder.

She’s survived twelve ops with this duo, reverse Russian Roulette be damned, including the one in Argentina.

It’s mission number thirteen.

(Specialists have superstitions about missions, and what to do before, during and after them. She isn’t any different, but she’s always considered four as the unlucky number, never thirteen)

Melinda’s fingers curl around the icer by her hip. Natasha does the same.

“All clear.”

There’s a few more seconds of muffled conversations before the truck starts moving again but she keeps herself on alert— the op had barely started.

Melinda closes her eyes and takes a calming breath. The rough, shaky drive suddenly becomes smooth, and she knows that their destination is getting nearer.

“Ready?” Natasha asks, and she doesn’t have to look at the other woman to know that there’s a smile on her face.

It’s been a while since they worked together—really worked together.

(The last time had been in Australia, and a herd of feral camels had chased them, with Coulson and Barton trying desperately to catch up)

Melinda looks at her and smiles back.

* * *

The op started the way she had planned it.

It also went sideways by the end, just as she had expected it.

But it’s successful, either way.

* * *

“You didn’t get this mission from Maria.” Melinda flatly states as she finishes applying the healing glue on Natasha’s shoulder blade.

The other woman doesn’t say anything, and Melinda continues patching her up, finally putting a strip of gauze over the bullet graze.

“Does it matter if we got this op from someone else? You needed back-up.”

“It matters when you pull a stunt like this.”

Melinda seals the tube and puts it back inside the medkit with the gauze and the small scissors. The mission – as she had assessed it – was a 6. In old SHIELD parlance, it was medium-risk operation for a raid team. It meant there was little chance someone’s head will get blown off. Back then, this kind of operation would have been classified as low-risk for any team with ‘strike’ in its name.

Nobody should have gotten hurt.

“It’s just a flesh wound.” Natasha says dismissively, zipping up her suit. “I’ve had worst.”

“That’s not the point.” She replies through gritted teeth. She turns her back on Natasha and busies herself with doing a quick inventory of her medkit. It’s a habit she picked up from Coulson, one of those small things she had teased him about during their first few ops together.

(He used to say that it’s because he’s always patching her up after missions and he didn’t want to run out of supplies in the middle of an emergency. But she knew it’s a way to keep himself from fussing too much)

It’s a habit she found crucial in these times where SHIELD has next to nothing.

“We’re on autopilot, Everybody okay back there?” Clint walks towards them but swiftly takes a step back when he sees the expression on her face. 

“On second thought, maybe we’re _not_ on autopilot.”

Neither woman says anything after a few minutes, the steady hum of the quinjet’s engine punctuating the silence between them. 

“Are you angry that I did something stupid and got shot? Or are you angry that it was Coulson who called us?” Natasha asks, finally.

The statement makes Melinda pause. She briefly considers deflecting but she’s talking to someone who’s well-versed in reverse interrogations. Deflecting will only make her persistent.

“He should be calling in favors for something important.”

“And you aren’t?”

An irritated sigh escapes her, but she doesn’t turn around to face Natasha. “Two Avengers on speed dial and he calls them for an op that can be done with five mercs.”

The other woman doesn’t reply immediately.

“Maybe you should take it up with the Director.”

She packs up the medkit, “Maybe I should.”

“You will?”

Melinda sets the kit aside and turns around, “No.” she keeps her tone and her face blank, “I follow orders. Whether I agree with it or not doesn’t matter.”

Natasha doesn’t say anything else, merely tilting her head to the side as a response. Then, a flash of realization crosses her face and she slowly nods, as though she’s reached a conclusion that’s both rational and obvious.

“Alright.” 

It seems Natasha’s prying is over.

Melinda wipes her hands on her pants before standing up, “Get some rest, Romanoff.” She sternly says and makes her way to the quinjet’s cockpit. She hears Natasha mutter something in Russian when she was almost out of earshot, something about elbows.

She quietly sits beside Barton, who doesn’t seem surprised to see her. 

He wordlessly hands her the spare pilot’s headset.

Her fingers itch as she stops herself from taking the controls. She hasn’t flown anything in months; there wasn’t a need for her to fly on her own and no one needed a pilot.

(Maybe that’s what she should have told Natasha—the thing she misses the most from SHIELD is her Bus)

“Stark recently made some modifications on this jet.” Barton says after sitting in silence for a while, “We could go faster if we’re off autopilot.” 

“Then why are we in autopilot?”

“I dunno, I thought it’d be nice to chit chat.”

Melinda’s eyes narrow as her nose involuntarily wrinkles.

“I know, it sounds stupid now that I’ve said it out loud.” he glances at her, “You. Chit chat. Bad combination.”

She snorts, which makes Barton smile.

He puts on his headset, “I don’t know what other improvements Stark made on this thing but I’m passing pilot duties to you.” He says as he presses a button and starts flipping switches. “Autopilot’s off.” He reports. Melinda immediately takes the controls.

Barton turns the speakers on, “This is your co-pilot speaking.” He announces, “I just explained to our pilot that a certain Mr. Anthony Stark made modifications on this quinjet. I have no idea what the hell they are because I stopped listening when he said mitigation of blah blah blah propulsion engines.”

Melinda rolls her eyes. She sees him smile wider.

“Anyway, since I have no idea what the modifications are, I absolutely have no idea what this baby can do except that it moves fast, so strap yourselves in _real_ tight because our pilot’s gonna show us some moves.”

* * *

She doesn’t write in the report that Barton threw up afterwards.

Twice.

* * *

“Consider this an apology.”

She doesn’t point out that apologies are two-way streets and just because a person had apologized doesn’t mean the offended person has to accept it.

But this is an apology coming from Nick Fury and those things come as often as blue moons— but even rarer than a Nick Fury apology is a _sincere_ Nick Fury apology.

“You used to be subtler with your manipulations.” She remarks as a she stops a folder sliding towards her side of the table.

Unfortunately, this is more of the former, not the latter, kind of apology.

(but still, how many people can legitimately say that Nick Fury had apologized to them?)

“I’ve tried asking nicely, I’ve tried pleading.” Fury replies, taking the seat in front of her, “Apologizing is the last thing I can think of that might work.”

Melinda impassively looks at the former director of SHIELD. She received a message to meet him in a bodega twenty blocks away from her apartment, and the owner – a portly man with an impressive goatee – led her to a backroom which suspiciously looks like it hosts an illegal card game every weekend.

“Do you even know what you’re apologizing for?”

(it might be a Nick Fury apology, but it doesn’t mean she has to accept it)

Fury lets out an exasperated sigh, “Sit down and read the damn file, May.”

She doesn’t sit but starts flipping through the folder instead. There are aerial shots of a facility with coordinates she recognizes as somewhere in the Sonoran Desert; recon photos on the ground showing a building within a vast tract of land enclosed by an unassuming fence; and surveillance photos of the ingress and egress of the facility’s guests.

One of whom is Grant Ward.

Melinda feels the blood rush to her head. She hasn’t had a lead on Ward for months— Garret’s Hydra cell died with him and anyone remotely connected to Garret had disappeared.

She glances at Fury, who’s quietly observing her.

“It gets better.” He casually says.

This time, Melinda sits down and sifts through the files with a critical eye.

They don’t have anyone on the inside. Neither did Fury, but whoever works for him managed to bug a Hydra goon and while the surveillance photos are grainy, they’re serviceable.

It appears to be a research facility, operating at half capacity. There’s nothing to indicate that it was ever fully operational, but recon shows that whichever Hydra cell is moving in, it’s doing it _fast_.

They’re transporting huge, bulky machines. Whatever for, Melinda can’t tell, but it will need a lot of power. Ward seems to be facilitating the transfer, but nothing suggests that he has a position in this group, much less have any influence in it.

Her hands still when she sees the last few photos.

They’re not just transferring machines—they’re also transferring people. 

Specifically, one person.

“Various Hydra factions have been abducting SHIELD agents since the fall. Coulson sent in Morse’s intel when he realized how widespread it is.” he states, “Found her purely by chance.”

“Is this all you have?”

“So far.”

It’s a two-birds-with-one-stone situation— she knows where to look for Ward and she knows where Palamas is being held. It’s a specific location but that’s about it. It will take weeks – months, even – to get any proper intel on this Hydra cell.

“Why give it to me and not to Coulson?”

“Because you have a grudge to settle.” Fury simply replies, “And as I see it, you can play it safe, which could take months, or you can go with a smash and grab, which could be done in a week.”

It’s basically his way of saying that when it comes down to teams, she only has two choices: SHIELD’s ragtag group of agents, or Fury’s motley crew of former-agents-now-members-of-the-Avengers; a choice between relinquishing control or accepting too high a risk.

“The next batch of intel will be coming in within twenty-four hours.” he says, glancing at his watch when she doesn’t say anything else, “I’ll send you the location of the drop.”

Fury stands up and walks out of the room without saying goodbye, leaving Melinda alone with a folder full of grainy pictures.

* * *

Forty-eight hours after her meeting with Fury, she sends a double encrypted message to SHIELD, with clear instructions that it’s for the Director’s eyes only.

After all, she isn’t the only one with a grudge to settle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Next chapter's looking... well, fun. :)
> 
> Comments are <3

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for the fandom. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I worried about the characterizations and the length of this fic (which was a lot. A whole lot)


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